Better-educated Kiwis more likely to pirate content

Better-educated New Zealanders are more likely to pirate
content online, a survey has found.

The Horizon Research online survey looked at New Zealanders'
habits when downloading content from the internet, including
music, videos and books.

It found more than a third had paid for content, while 21 per
cent had downloaded it illegally. About a 10th were unsure
whether they had ever downloaded illegally.

The survey found people with higher qualifications were more
likely to have downloaded content illegally, Horizon Research
manager Grant McInman said.

"People who have degrees seem to be more likely than people
who don't have degrees to be telling us that they were
downloading illegally, or that they had in the past."

The survey found 16.3 per cent of New Zealanders had used a
file-sharing service to download content illegally, while
18.6 per cent had downloaded illegally in other ways.

Unsurprisingly, younger adults were more likely to have
pirated content.

Some 34 per cent of people aged 18-24 had done so, compared
with 4.5 per cent of people aged 65-74 and 2.1 per cent of
people aged 75 or older.

While legal downloaders were more numerous than internet
pirates, they were also less prolific - only 6.5 per cent had
downloaded content in the last week, compared with 30.8 per
cent of illegal file-sharers.

Legal downloaders were also using work-arounds to buy content
from overseas providers, like Netflix, which usually block
local users.

Some 5.8 per cent of all legal downloaders had disguised
their geographical locations using a 'virtual tunnel' to pay
for overseas content - and almost half of those had done so
in the last week.

The survey drew on 2688 responses from an online panel
recruited to match the adult New Zealand population. It was
commissioned by Horizon Research and conducted between March
20 and April 3.

When you say 'pirate', you mean theft. For which the the
degree is BAROC/BuggerAll for RippingOffCreatives. Those in
the Arts, comprising multi million dollar industries of
intellectual enterprise, are unlikely to be amongst the
educated illegal downloaders.